Note 2301 — SECTION III. HINDŪSTĀN (continued 3)

Between the last explicit date in the text, viz. Sunday, Muḥ. 19th, and the one next following, viz. Saturday, Ṣafar 3rd, the diary of six days is wanting. The gap seems to be between the unfinished account of doings in Dhūlpūr and the incomplete one of those of the Monday of the party. For one of the intermediate days Bābur had made an appointment, when in Gūālīār (f. 343), with the envoys of Bikramājīt, the trysting-day being Muḥ. 23rd (i.e. 9 days after Muḥ. 14th). Bābur is likely to have gone to Bīāna as planned; that envoys met him there may be surmised from the circumstance that when negociations with Bikramājīt were renewed in Āgra (f. 345), two sets of envoys were present, a “former” one and a “later” one, and this although all envoys had been dismissed from Gūālīār. The “former” ones will have been those who went to Bīāna, were not given leave there, but were brought on to Āgra; the “later” ones may have come to Āgra direct from Ranthaṃbhor. It suits all round to take it that pages have been lost on which was the record of the end of the Dhūlpūr visit, of the journey to the, as yet unseen, fort of Bīāna, of tryst kept by the envoys, of other doings in Bīāna where, judging from the time taken to reach Sīkrī, it may be that the ma‘jūn party was held.